Preamble…
First of all, note that I am talking about Assessments, not Tests. Tests:
- You can pass/fail them
- They are a “final” act, done at the end of a course/project
- You cram for a test, then forget everything afterwards (that was my experience in university anyway!)
Assessments:
- You cannot pass/fail them
- They are not “final” acts. You do them during a course/project.
- They are only there to gather information at that point in time and under those conditions
- The information gathered is not forgotten, but used to plan the next stage of a course/project
- They give information about CHANGES over time
I’ve known many people go into assessments nervous as hell thinking they will fail. This is a terrible situation to be in. It increases your stress levels, makes you feel crap…but most of all, it makes you miss the whole point of an assessment.
“Assessments gather information”
An assessment is not a “final” act. It is an ongoing process that gives you information like:
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Where did you start from.
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Are you moving forwards/backwards.
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Are you progressing slowly/quickly.
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Is all your hard work making the difference you want.
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Have you reached your destination yet.
What can be assessed?
The quick answer is – anything. The basic ones include things like:
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Height
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Weight
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Body part dimensions (neck, chest, arms, waist, legs etc)
These are all pretty easy to do and the results are fairly self explanetory…so I’m not going to bother talking about them. Instead I’m going to talk about the more interesting ones like:
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Body composition (how much of your body is made of fat/muscle/bone/ etc)
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Aerobic and anaerobic fitness (long and short term fitness)
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Power output
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Agility
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flexibility
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Muscular strength and endurance
I’ll go over these bit by bit over the next few days. I’ll try to explain what they are, what they do, what they can tell you, their advantages/disadvantages and anything else I can think of.
I’ll be writing this up on the fly (I love flying by the seat of my pants!) and I’ve never been that good at proof reading, so let me know how it goes and I’ll try to improve it as I go along.
And if you want your own physical/fitness assessment, just contact me and arrange one today.
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